{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1","title":"Micro.blog - Jordan Hall","home_page_url":"https://micro.blog","feed_url":"https://micro.blog/posts/jordanellishall","_microblog":{"about":"https://micro.blog/about/api","id":"1552623","username":"jordanellishall","bio":"A very wealthy copywriter","pronouns":"","is_following":false,"is_you":false,"following_count":12,"discover_count":0},"author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2024/02/1552623.jpg"},"items":[{"id":"85270148","content_html":"

I have been reading and enjoying Walter Wink, by way of Fleming Rutledge. Who should I read to complement or counter?

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2026/03/01/i-have-been-reading-and.html","date_published":"2026-03-01T12:14:21+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2026-03-01 12:14","date_timestamp":1772367261,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"63936445","content_html":"

@tinyroofnail Walter Brueggeman has a similar reading in his commentary — Babel as representative of a “fortress mentality.” Rather than agreeing to “go forth and multiply,” which inherently involves taking on risk (i.e., faith), people consolidate resources, trust to their own devices, and lock the gates. There’s maybe a way to read this as overly agrarian and anti-urban (Cain founds the first city, etc.), but I think it’s a compelling alternative to the more traditional Promethean-ish reading. Anyway, I also hadn’t come across it until a few years ago and now find it hard to ignore.

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Mr Honeyfoot meanwhile, his hands in the air like a Methodist praising God, was walking rapidly from bookcase to bookcase; he could scarcely stop long enough to read the title of one book before his eye was caught by another on the other side of the room. “Oh, Mr Norrell!” he cried. “Such a quantity of books! Surely we shall find the answers to all our questions here!”

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“I doubt it, sir,” was Mr Norrell’s dry reply.

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— Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2025/04/26/mr-honeyfoot-meanwhile-his-hands.html","date_published":"2025-04-26T15:07:30+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2025-04-26 15:07","date_timestamp":1745680050,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"62471367","content_html":"

I attempted to make a (soft) connection between commonplace books, Baudelaire, and Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, which has one of the most remarkable soundtracks I’ve ever heard.

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I wrote a Lenten meditation on Luke 13:31-35, the gist of which is, Let Us Now Praise Famous Hens.

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@ablerism Aha, makes sense! I haven’t read MacIntyre in a while, but AV and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry left a big impression on me (speaking as an inveterate normie who can’t pretend to follow half of this stuff). Anyway I was trying to track down where else I’d seen MacIntyre pop up recently-ish and came up with this review in the LRB of a biography published in ’22 and this post by Adam Kotsko, which reminded me a lot of the opening section of AV.

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@ablerism I saw Myles Werntz recently started a reading group for After Virtue. Do you sense your own intellectual shifts are running parallel with others’? (I am trying not to say “vibe shift,” but there I go.)

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Anyway, this quote seems like a good summary of what he talks about (so far as I understand it): the moral life is important, but it’s not really possible outside of a community.

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Katie Crutchfield on Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal. 🎶

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It has quickly consumed my mind and emotions and all of the empty time and space in all this travel I’ve been doing. I don’t even really think I know how to talk about it. It feels hyperbolic to call it brilliant. It’s something else. There’s a casualness and stupidity to its complete and total airtight perfection. Brad said it sounds like freedom. I couldn’t agree more.

\n
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I wrote about Colson Whitehead, the apocalypse, and my son.

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@ayjay Very cool story. I went to Sewanee and worked at the Sewanee Review under George Core the year after I graduated. Brooks and the New Critics were still a big deal there, and I think to some degree still are. Mr. Core always talked about those folks, many of whom were his friends and (slightly older) contemporaries, as if they’d just walked out of the room.

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@joshuapsteele Presumably for many, but especially for parents, there are (at least) two different steps to cleaning a house. 1) Cleaning in order to clean. 2) Actually cleaning. The second is rarely, if ever, accomplished. (This was not so much learned as belatedly acknowledged.)

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/52719459","date_published":"2024-12-19T23:45:19+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-12-19 23:45","date_timestamp":1734651919,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}},{"id":"52471203","content_html":"My favorite music of the year: Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood, by a relatively long shot, but Sault’s Acts of Faith deserves a listen — like a 30-minute gospel jam. Of course, a day after I wrote this post, I learned about Hannah Frances' Keeper of the Shepherd. Haunting, oneiric stuff! Think latter-day Fleet ... jordanellishall.micro.blog","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/12/17/my-favorite-music.html","date_published":"2024-12-17T14:52:48+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-12-17 14:52","date_timestamp":1734447168,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"51995903","content_html":"

@tinyroofnail ::popping in, uninvited:: As for books, I’ve only read Prophetic Imagination, but he also regularly blogs here. These are typically long, in-depth pieces, 1-2 times a week. No idea how he’s so prolific.

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Some music I missed from ‘22-23 — and a nominee for Thanksgiving’s quintessential album.

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AI is the ultimate hold-my-beer event: my entirely superfluous addition to an oversaturated discourse.

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@ablerism the most devastatingly accurate description i’ve seen is “linkedin for writers”

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Add my vote for Herzog’s Nosferatu — so good, so weird. Excited for Robert Eggers’s version coming out later this year. Would also add The Innocents (1962); easily the best Turn of the Screw adaptation

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@drewbelf That is…an interesting gloss by Mr. Vance! Interesting!

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“‘There’s less brand loyalty than there used to be,’ Christ said.\"

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@tinyroofnail Simeon Zahl wrote an essay last year re: theory of change and Christian ministry. Interesting to see this particular phrase popping up

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@ablerism thanks for pointing this out, great listen

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I wrote about why you should ditch your gin and tonic, and what to try instead.

\n\"\"\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/09/05/i-wrote-about.html","date_published":"2024-09-05T21:17:44+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-09-05 21:17","date_timestamp":1725571064,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"44487728","content_html":"

Ruskin's apology for castles: jordanellishall.micro.blog

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@ayjay I guess this technically qualifies as palliative care, but my favorite example of this sort of thing is Arvo Pärt’s “Tabula Rasa,” which Adam Ross has written about. (And maybe I know about this via your blog; can’t remember.)

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Cory Doctorow on AI’s productivity theater:

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\n\n

Original research paper by The Upwork Research Institute (their framing is, predictably, more optimistic).

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/07/26/cory-doctorow-on.html","date_published":"2024-07-26T13:36:26+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-07-26 13:36","date_timestamp":1722000986,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"40794091","content_html":"\"I liked his appearance; I knew his appearance; he came from the right place; he was one of us. He stood there for all the parentage of his kind, for men and women by no means clever or amusing, but whose very existence is based upon honest faith, and upon the instinct of courage. I don’t mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptations straight in the face—a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose—a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless—an unthinking and blessed s... jordanellishall.micro.blog","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/07/03/i-liked-his.html","date_published":"2024-07-03T13:58:12+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-07-03 13:58","date_timestamp":1720015092,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"40741585","content_html":"

Talked with my friend John Springer about landscape painting, his new art collective, and Ingres versus Delacroix. Here’s his Field of Yellow Flowers. 🎨

\n\"\"\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/07/02/talked-with-my.html","date_published":"2024-07-02T17:49:49+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-07-02 17:49","date_timestamp":1719942589,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"40260900","content_html":"

@drewbelf Do you know The Old Ways, by Robert Macfarlane? Sounds…similar…as would a lot of his work. I recommend Macfarlane whenever possible.

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“In Athens, Georgia, R.E.M.’s hometown, memories are everywhere”

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/23/in-athens-georgia.html","date_published":"2024-06-23T15:42:06+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-23 15:42","date_timestamp":1719157326,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"39630310","content_html":"

I wrote about what, if anything, constitutes summer reading. Probably nothing!

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/15/i-wrote-about.html","date_published":"2024-06-15T13:54:51+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-15 13:54","date_timestamp":1718459691,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"39524767","content_html":"Mrs Russell among the flowers in the garden of Goulphar, Belle-Île, John Peter Russell. Born in Australia, Russell was a friend of Van Gogh and Monet, and mentored Matisse at his home studio on Belle-Île in the 1890s. (His use of color was a major influence on Matisse, who up that point operated in a darke... jordanellishall.micro.blog","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/13/mrs-russell-among.html","date_published":"2024-06-13T21:11:25+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-13 21:11","date_timestamp":1718313085,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"39497929","content_html":"

@ablerism La Folie Baudelaire, by Robert Calasso. Really any book by Calasso functions as a series/collage of biographies/portraits, but I particularly love this one.

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/39497929","date_published":"2024-06-13T14:26:11+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-13 14:26","date_timestamp":1718288771,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}},{"id":"39450152","content_html":"\"I wonder, in other words, whether the work of doing the laundry or washing the dishes—these are almost always the examples, but they stand in for a host of similar activities—might not provide a certain indispensable grounding to the artistic endeavor, tethering it to the world in a vital rather than stupefying manner. Or, to take another angle, whether a fidelity to such tasks might not yield certain virtues that might also sustain the artist in their labors: attentiveness, patience, perseverance, or humility, for example.\"\n\n— L. M. Sacasas\nI think a preoccupation with art, in which the work of art... jordanellishall.micro.blog","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/12/i-wonder-in.html","date_published":"2024-06-12T20:18:03+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-12 20:18","date_timestamp":1718223483,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"39176619","content_html":"

The Skate, Chardin. This painting fascinated the young Matisse, who spent more time copying it than anything else he saw in the Louvre. Proust compared the fish’s innards to a cathedral nave. Diderot apparently thought it was disgusting.

\n\"\"\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/08/the-skate-chardin.html","date_published":"2024-06-08T23:34:05+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-08 23:34","date_timestamp":1717889645,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"38931220","content_html":"

@ayjay Thanks for these. I know the Robinson book didn’t land for you — do you happen to have a favorite book/commentary on Genesis?

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A good haul. 📚

\n\"Books\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/03/a-good-haul.html","date_published":"2024-06-03T17:19:30+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-03 17:19","date_timestamp":1717435170,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"38751421","content_html":"

“Give the mind two seconds alone and it thinks it’s Pythagoras.”\n— Annie Dillard, Holy The Firm 📚

\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/06/02/give-the-mind.html","date_published":"2024-06-02T19:51:43+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-06-02 19:51","date_timestamp":1717357903,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"38563585","content_html":"

The Blood of a Poet, dir. Jean Cocteau. Ok, had my fill. 🎥

\n\"\"\n","summary":"","url":"https://jordanellishall.micro.blog/2024/05/30/the-blood-of.html","date_published":"2024-05-30T21:04:17+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-05-30 21:04","date_timestamp":1717103057,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":false,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":false,"note":"","syndication":[]}},{"id":"38179548","content_html":"

@joshuapsteele I think Understanding Poetry was the standard anthology/textbook when the dominant school was so-called New Criticism. Edited (with commentary) by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks. Maybe not for everyone, but it’s a good one to have on the shelf if you can get it used for a decent price.

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/38179548","date_published":"2024-05-24T21:05:39+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-05-24 21:05","date_timestamp":1716584739,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}},{"id":"37168368","content_html":"

@kirk So it goes! I guess you just gotta write what you will and cultivate a nearly solipsistic degree of indifference to outcomes (?).

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/37168368","date_published":"2024-05-09T22:10:10+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-05-09 22:10","date_timestamp":1715292610,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}},{"id":"34526268","content_html":"

@ayjay Thanks for doing these. Re: Auden on plains, I thought of “August 1968.”

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/34526268","date_published":"2024-03-30T16:09:45+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-03-30 16:09","date_timestamp":1711814985,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}},{"id":"29633915","content_html":"

@ayjay My sense when I read Guy Davenport: Wow, I am even dumber than I thought I was.

\n","url":"https://micro.blog/jordanellishall/29633915","date_published":"2024-01-20T16:04:57+00:00","author":{"name":"Jordan Hall","url":"https://happyfew.substack.com/","avatar":"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/96/https%3A%2F%2Favatars.micro.blog%2Favatars%2F2024%2F02%2F1552623.jpg","_microblog":{"username":"jordanellishall"}},"_microblog":{"date_relative":"2024-01-20 16:04","date_timestamp":1705766697,"is_favorite":false,"is_bookmark":false,"is_deletable":false,"is_conversation":true,"is_linkpost":false,"is_mention":true}}]}